


And Shadows Numberless

by kaitain



Category: Dune - All Media Types, Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaitain/pseuds/kaitain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House Harkonnen is not a “Great” House with regards to its moral character, its camaraderie, or even its armed forces — but it does possess hideous wealth, and it is a great surprise that its members have not yet dismembered each other. Surely, that must count for something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wont to Want

**Author's Note:**

> house harkonnen is really pretty interesting. despicable, but interesting! this fic is going to be my attempt at sort of studying my interpretation of their dynamics, i guess? i find piter and feyd particularly interesting, so this centers on them and how they function within the arrangement of gross insufferable weirdos that makes up house harkonnen. there's a whole lot of headcanon that'll be going into this fic, and as i'm planning it out it's set to be about 5 chapters spanning three or so in-universe years.
> 
> so, without further ado: chapter one. in which feyd acts like a bratty teenager to his mentat-nanny. i’ve never really written feyd before, given that i basically always write piter, so. this was a bit of an adventure! i also wrote this at about 7 am running on, like. two hours of sleep from the day before, so just. don't expect herbertian philosophical prowess, here.

“Again.”

They’ve been over this many times, and Feyd-Rautha is growing weary of it. He is nearly grown now, and the Mentat has no right to push him around like this. He thinks of telling his Uncle, wondering if he might punish the unruly servant, but it would be to no avail. Getting Piter sided against him would be unwise.

To that end, Feyd completes the flurry of blows again, this time focusing on moving correctly, on bending fluidly and ducking lower at the appropriate time; he can feel the tendons and muscles in his arms and legs better than ever before, obeying him and sliding along the bone with great grace. He thinks he’s done well, with that one; he felt the dirt beneath his feet like never before, scrunching beneath his light boots as they dug in for stability—

“Again.”

Once more, Feyd goes through the repertoire, and, prompted by a shake of the head, once more after that, and then once again.

“Again!” Piter barks, and it is then that Feyd straightens, back rigid, and whirls around to glare at the Mentat.

“What am I doing wrong?” he demands.

“You haven't realized?”

The bastard is toying with him. “Tell me!” Feyd growls, scraping at the earth with a restless foot.

Chuckling, the Mentat concedes. “Far too formulaic. You must be prepared to break from that formula in a true fight; you must be more aware of your body, of the way it is moving.”

More aware of his body! Feyd resists the urge to spit on the ground. He doubts that he could be more aware of his body than he’d been in those first few repetitions. “Do it, then,” he challenges, screwing his face up before spitting, “ _Mentat_ ” with contempt, as he has seen his Uncle do many times before. It doesn't have the effect he'd hoped. He supposes that his Uncle has overused it, because Piter doesn't bat an eye.

Piter is swathed in fabric that one would think would hinder him terribly, but after a moment taken to smirk at his charge, he darts into the movements with practiced ease, limbs moving with a grace and fluidity that Feyd realizes then that he did not match. In only a few soft rushes of breath, it is over, and he is standing straight and demure and dignified again, looking back at Feyd with the knowledge that he has been right all along written all over his face.

It makes Feyd want to strike him.

“All right,” Feyd scoffs. “Perhaps I need a different approach than swinging blind at the air.” A wicked grin threatens to form on his face, but he suppresses it as he brightly suggests: “Shall I try it on you?”

Shockingly, this idea seems to delight Piter, and he sinks easily into a defensive stance with a look of great amusement on his face. “I do believe you shall,” he replies easily, flicking a hand to throw back the material of a sleeve and put the blade in his wrist-sheath at the ready, an instinctive gesture.

Feyd lunges at him, aiming a kick to the left knee that comes close but not close enough to grazing its target; in frustration, he reaches to grip a handful of the Mentat’s robes and jerk him closer, but he is one step ahead, tugging the material back with one hand and pulling _Feyd_ close with the other, twisting his arm painfully and throwing off his balance enough to turn him to one side and give him a powerful shove with a shoulder.

Feyd stumbles before catching himself and digging his heels into the dirt, turning sharply with a formed fist and, in one heavy breath, jerking it with all his strength into the hollow at the crest of Piter’s ribs; Feyd feels his knuckles drive up beneath them, feels Piter’s muscles tense and buckle as he hurtles backward, feels Piter’s breath ghosting over his hair in an uncontrollable retch as his diaphragm is rattled, feels a sense of _victory_.

When he looks up, Piter is standing as straight as before and smiling more merrily than a man who has just had the wind knocked out of him has any right to. Feyd’s sense of victory dissipates somewhat.

“Good!” the Mentat chortles, and there is no indication in his voice or posture that he’s just been punched. “I daresay we’re finished at last, then.”

 

—

Afterward, they sit in silence and stare out at the city. Dawn has just broken, and Piter watches the light snowfall outside as if categorizing and counting each flake. Feyd supposes that he is. Not consciously, but on some level, it’s a function of his brain; it must be, Feyd thinks, why he seems so very at ease.

It is the first snowfall of the year. It always makes Harko look so clean, a contradiction to its very nature. Before long, the snow will be stained an ugly, industrial brown, but for now it is white as can be, floating down slowly onto tarnished buildings and fresh cobalt paint and roads that have been re-paved time and again. Even in its most beautiful sector, right here ringing the castle, Harko is a sombre and ugly place. Feyd recalls Piter telling him once that all of Giedi Prime, and Lankiveil, and Arrakis, too, were means to an end; that his Uncle is not concerned with beauty (though Piter omitted what sort of beauty the old monster _was_ concerned with), but functionality. With solaris. With spice.

Billions of solaris worth of spice are in the blood of that Mentat. Feyd knows it to be true, and he knows that everyone who meets eyes with the creature knows as much, too. People stare, sometimes. Other times, they ask how one goes about acquiring a Fremen Mentat. Each time, Piter and his master share a certain look: one of quiet, resigned exasperation, but also one of vague smugness. Feyd doesn't know why Piter won't just wear contacts. Politics, he supposes. It's always that.

Those falsely Fremen eyes turn from the window back to Feyd, narrowed in the thinnest smile that does not show on the man’s lips. “You did well.”

It is a rare compliment, but Feyd does not bask in it. Piter’s compliments are always short-lived, followed by a snappish remark or the cold sting of a barbed word. And yet, that sting does not come. Piter simply turns back to the window, a slender hand settling on the soft spot Feyd had driven his knuckles into. Feyd doesn’t deny himself the hint of pride he feels at that, though he knows that Piter feels no pain— it is a Mentat thing, he assumes, to block such pain. His pride owes itself to that, for though Piter may convince his body that it feels no lingering ache, he knows that any other man would be wounded.

“I know,” Feyd replies.

Piter laughs, and it is a sound behind which endless menace roils. Feyd himself dares to smile, considering that, for once, Piter is on his side again.

It isn't that he misses his childhood— he never truly had one, he knows, but no heir truly does— but he thinks sometimes of years ago when he was still small and content to sit in silence with the Mentat like this, to be taught his numbers and taught to read, to clap his hands in quiet delight when he heard the seldom-repeated praise that followed a correct answer. He can still recall some of the earliest words he read aloud— it was a passage from the Mentat Handbook, written out in Piter's slender, delicate hand: _Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos._ Young as he was, he never understood it at the time, and he knows that Piter hadn't expected such a feat of him, but now he thinks he understands.

Chaos. Feyd has seen much chaos in his thirteen years, but he finds so much of it to be beautiful. The castle is full of organized chaos, quiet alcoves where the silence is suffocating, paintings of Barons long dead, rooms haunted by his Uncle's bellowing voice— his Uncle's screaming over the top of the frantic slither of Piter's voice, leaping to placate him, to provide that generalist input and quell the roiling chaos. 

“It’s well to know,” comes the beginning of a speech that Feyd doesn't particularly care to hear, “that you consider yourself adept. It is— but confidence could be your downfall." Piter glances back at him, exasperation glittering in his eyes. "You dance, boy. I’ll break you of that.”

Feyd wants to roll his eyes and retort that Piter’s every movement looks like something out of a ballet, but he nods. He knows that Piter can hear the sound of fabric ghosting over fabric and identify it as that sullen affirmation, and so he dares to risk an impudent: “Will you?”

Another laugh, this time crueler. “You doubt Piter?”

Feyd brings his shoulders up in a calculated shrug.

“It’s of no use to be on your toes, Feyd-Rautha. A fighter is not a fellow _en pointe_ ; you mustn’t waver so precariously on the balls of your feet.” He turns back to Feyd, resting his chin in the palm of his right hand. It is a casual gesture, comfortable but not off-guard, for Piter never is; usually, Feyd only sees him standing rigid and ready to snap in the presence of his Uncle, but now, he is more fluid. Feyd himself takes o na looser position as he watches the way a pale chemical burn, almost as pale as the flesh itself, stretches up from the cuff of Piter’s sleeve. It must be many years old. Feyd nods again.

"Power."

The somewhat muted slam of a heavy boot hits the delicately tiled floor, and Feyd forces himself not to submit to alarm; he looks down, to the source of the sound— Piter, of course, cementing his point in his usual theatrical way— and then back up, checking the blue-in-blue eyes for a certain glint. It is not there. Feyd had expected to glimpse some moment of approval, some acknowledgement that he had not flinched, that he wasn’t a boy any longer. Feyd wonders if perhaps he missed it, refusing the thought that it was never there to begin with.

“You must foster power in your legs and feet to keep your balance,” Piter goes on. “If you've no other choice but to grapple, don’t be a fool about it. Your brother is far larger than you, and it stands to reason that his brutish techniques would be of no help to you in a fight; forget them. I will see no lunging from you, no attempts to overpower a man thrice your size unless you’ve weakened him considerably.” His expression darkens. “You should know by now that this is not a game.”

“I do,” Feyd replies through gritted teeth.

“Then it should be simple not to treat it as such.” The smile that crosses Piter’s lips is incongruous with his tone, sweet to counter bitterness. Feyd feels mocked, and correctly so. Anger swelling, he decides not to protest further and submerges that anger elsewhere.

“You do not impress me,” Piter says, and the cold edge to his voice cuts more than Feyd would like to admit. Feyd does not protest.

“A child is not expected to _fouetté_ with finesse, or know precisely how to draw a blade to be both defensive and offensive. That is why, Feyd-Rautha, I _teach_.” He ducks his head down a bit to meet Feyd’s lowered and sullen eyes. “I would like for you to impress me, but you have done no such thing. You’ve sated me, yes. Your technique is satisfying— but it could be _better_. It could be much more.”

“I’m not an assassin,” Feyd spits, but there is little true venom or contempt in it— a moment of bitterness and anger, but it is fleeting.

“And you shan’t be.” The smile never falters, an ever-patient mask. “But, if you don’t want me to pull you from the arena and confine you to political studies, you will let me teach.”

With a sneer, Feyd sits up and stares back at him. “You don’t have that power.” Nonchalantly, he crosses his legs, knee-over-knee. "You don't have any power."

"Oh?" The mask has grown opaque to hide the heat of rage that Feyd knows must be there now. That smile only twitches wider. “You’d do well to remember the sway I have over your Uncle.” Piter's tone is calm, level, but a threat bubbles beneath the surface. “You are not our na-Baron yet.”

Feyd wants to snarl in his face, but he is forced to believe him— he knows there to be no love, no loyalty, not even respect between his uncle and his Mentat, but there is a certain degree of trust. It is the same degree of trust he must place in the Mentat now, knowing what he is and that he is indeed a king of manipulation, if not of anything else. “You wouldn’t make Rabban the Baron,” he says at last. Rabban is already a Count, and already whatever those blasted desert scum called him, to boot: Demon Ruler.

“This is true.” Piter fans out his long fingers, a gesture that shows he has nothing to hide. “Neither your Uncle nor I would put the _Mudir Nahya_ at the helm of Giedi Prime," he says with a faint chuckle, amused not only at the title but at the way those distasteful desert words flutter from his lips, "but it would certainly be unfortunate for there to be no direct successor.”

Feyd’s brows draw down in consternation. “You wouldn’t—”

“I would not,” Piter snaps, quickly. “Don’t be foolish.” He could never usurp the title of Baron; it would be unheard of, ridiculous, and what's more, he bears not even the thinnest resemblance to a Harkonnen. If anything, his thin, hawk-like features call to mind the proud and frigid Atreides bloodline. But moreso, he is the Bashar-breed, possessed of the tapered chin, the high, chiseled cheekbones, the hair— cut regally short and graying now at the temples, but once a finer blond. Feyd has seen only a few Sardaukar in his life, and they all reminded him of Piter. He has wondered on occasion what havoc a Mentat-Bashar, a twisted one and one of the corps to boot, would be able to wreak. Perhaps more than the Mentat of a Great House, but would torture on Salusa and death as a meaningless soldier be better than training on Tleilax and a life of infamy? Either way, he would be a servant following orders all his life.

It's only a matter of semantics, but the truth of the matter is what he is now, and what each of his gholas will always be.

“But you want it, don’t you?” Feyd asks, innocently enough. “Power?”

Piter’s expression grows colder. His arms fold loosely over his chest— still casual, but closing off. “Most men do.”

"But you aren't 'most men.'"

A chuckle sounds from Piter, soft and yet resonant. "This is true."

Feyd wonders when his Uncle might kill this man.

He isn't particularly excited for that day, of course— there is still much that Piter has to teach him, and much to be done for the Baron— but it could be soon, he supposes. Piter has always been impudent and snappish, quick to dismiss things and operating largely on his own terms, though he knows well by now when to truly hold his tongue. Feyd has never seen his Uncle strike him, but he thinks that it must have happened before. Piter never flinches around the man, though, not even when he slams a fat palm down on the surface of his desk and bellows for silence. Perhaps that scares the Baron, a man used to fear and deference. The fact that he cannot disturb or disgust someone, that even the threat of violence would be met with an airy shrug, must enrage him.

And yet, Piter is useful. Feyd cannot imagine the Baron throwing away a tool so useful as that— at least, not until it's been thoroughly broken.

Feyd stares at his Uncle's prized twisted Mentat. He is looking for fault lines.

All he sees is a smirk.


	2. As Though of Hemlock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "For everything was wealth: spice, solaris, influence, infamy.  
> The Baron was rich in all of it."
> 
>   
> Piter considers his history with House Harkonnen and is summoned to the Baron's dining quarters for a terse chat. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise! i'm actually still updating this fic! it's somehow been three entire years to the day, but i'm back with a long headcanon-ridden chapter. i promise less exposition next time! but if you enjoy my copious piter headcanoning (and some of you do!! that's wild! thank you!), go nuts with this chapter.
> 
> i think about this fic all the time, honestly, but that almost makes it more difficult to write. so i'm just going to go for it and jump back in, according to the original plan of being a study of the dynamics between hh's "main" members.

Piter de Vries is well aware of the setback of _consequence_. It dogs his every step eagerly, and he must find ways to thwart it again and again.

As a blossoming Mentat, he memorized caches of laws and regulations to perfection, coaxing out their weaknesses and loopholes and committing them to memory ever more fiercely. He knows which are air-tight and which droop beneath the weight of their own vulnerability. He understands the Great Convention, the O.C. Bible, the limits of kanly and where they might be pushed. He picks apart the very laws that govern the baronial fiefdoms, and with that power, he forces his Baron to acknowledge his use. He makes his superiority to the ancient machines well-apparent as often as he can.

Still, consequences linger among his machinations, some more immediate than others. The consequences of addiction shine in his very face, anchored to his brain and distilling in his blood. The consequences of insubordination and of arrogance remain to be seen. Piter has evaded the executioner for years; he can deny his heresy easily when the Baron is no God.

But every action drags a string of possibilities behind it, towing a great cadre of potential results.

Piter was acquired - purchased - at the age of thirty. The Baron himself was a younger, trimmer man, but hardly by much; already he was aided by suspensors, and his eyes glittered from the fleshy depths of their sockets as he studied Piter.

He was willing to pay a great sum for him; in one breath he treated the matter as a paltry exchange of pocket-change, and in the next he stressed its profundity, the necessity of _this_ Mentat and no other. His affability dripped away like a thin sheen of sweat and exposed the desperation underneath: this was a siridar lord who had never been without a Mentat, and the sort of Mentat he had come to seek was a complex acquisition indeed.

Piter had allowed himself a measure of amusement, observing the volleys between the old mentors who had trained him and the man who was to become his master for life. But he had not allowed himself to smile or to meet the Baron's eyes; always, he glanced overhead or over one bulbous shoulder, refusing a line of contact in any way profound. He was not permitted to guarantee his service until the arrangement was finalized, and even a glance could raise a haughty nobleman's hopes far too high.

Piter has examined his own records. He knows the full circumstances of his acquisition: he understands himself as an tool to be bought. The sum was justified and set aside, the arrangements carefully made, the consultations all recorded. Piter had been young and cunning and cruel, a creature so agreeably distant from the House's former Mentat - and a creature to rival the Atreides’ precious Hawat.

The one thing the Baron could not afford was to be deprived of such an asset.

And so his offer was generous, and his demands were imperious. Had such a governor never come along, another house would have readily taken a young Piter de Vries for their own, free of the pressure to match his exorbitant dowry - but Piter recognizes the politics of wealth, and more than a decade later, he is sure that the Baron would have made a claim to him. For everything was wealth: spice, solaris, influence, infamy. The Baron was rich in all of it.

 

Piter had arrived on Giedi Prime as dawn struck the ancestral city of Harko. It was a place of incongruity. Poverty cowered before affluence and prosperity struggled with the ceaseless grind of industry. Functionality warred with luxury: sumptuous buildings spiraled and curved beside hulking, formless warehouses. Walls were streaked with Harkonnen cobalt and streets were smeared with soot and filth.

Harko was incapable of feigning loveliness for more than a handful of meters. Its great ugliness was the charm of it, Piter thought; the rampant disparity intrigued him. It would be a philosophical puzzle, his chance at last to observe the tenets of twisting in reality. There would be no more theoretical play; here, at last, was a setting where alternative ethics would proceed in the media of blood and pain. Piter watched the filth disperse as the Baron’s transportation skirted the common sectors, drawn instead along paths reserved for his personal use.

The slave complexes were not so common in Harko as in Barony, where Piter had been told that a massive one struck the sky in a perpetual blow. This would be confirmed to him in the flesh before long.

He observed the distant slums, the quarters of the free citizens – free but poor, and furiously overworked. He did not pity them, and it would never occur to him to do so, but he glimpsed their comings and goings and made a note to understand their habits. If the people were to be useful to him, their ways would have to be understood.

A sporting arena, made for gladiatorial events, caught Piter’s eye, and his interest caught the Baron’s. With a waxy smile, he had confirmed its purpose and called it a place of great prestige. Piter was no truthsayer, but he knew it was no lie. The place was opulent and well-kept. He was eager to set foot inside, though he was careful not to display his interest too forthrightly.

The Baron’s keep rose higher into the soot-gray sky as the transport drew near. It eclipsed the horizon. It became the horizon.

Harkonnen watched expectantly as Piter looked upon it. When Piter made no comment, no overtures of flattery or admiration, he himself took up the cause. “This place is a fortress. The ancestral Keep of House Harkonnen.”

A fitting name, Piter thought. A place to be kept.

The servants were curious as they entered, but fear and subservience outweighed their compulsion to stare. Only the guardsman – the Baron introduced him as his personal guard captain, newly appointed – glanced to Piter and nodded with appropriate deference. He saw Mentat and master to the Baron’s study, and stepped away outside the door.

The Baron lowered himself into the high-backed chair behind his desk and heaved a sigh. In the coming months, he would order another suspensor to ease the strain of his mass.

Piter took several measured steps forward and halted before the desk, motionless but observant. He found it curious that the Baron preferred the walls of his study to be red, so close to the color of the Atreides hawk.

"Now, then,” the Baron announced, and Piter understood why the room had such high ceilings: it made Harkonnen’s voice boom unnaturally, ricocheting from wall to wall. “No more of these diplomatic games. You will look me in the eyes when I speak to you, Mentat." He folded his fat hands on the shining surface of his desk and waited for Piter's response.

Piter realized that this Baron was perhaps more observant than he had given him credit for. He raised his chin, tilted his head, and stared ahead into the old man’s keen eyes without faltering. "Indeed, my lord." 

He sensed himself signing contracts in the coming months, somehow standardized without ever being recorded. There was no ink, no signet. This was merely the relationship, he found, between master and Mentat; it was a retractable leash upon which he was free to pull, but his strength would always vye with the Baron’s. He could compel him to leniency, perhaps even to unhook the collar for a time, but it would be merely a condition, without permanence.

He grew quickly accustomed to the layout of the Keep and the schedules of its servants. Such things were simple to memorize; before three standard months had passed, he knew them with certainty. But it was more difficult to acclimate himself to the Baron’s moods and whims, at first unpredictable. For two standard years and then some, Piter familiarized himself with them.

He had begun to derive patterns and causation when Feyd-Rautha was born, and it all became unpredictable once more. The Baron was incensed. The child was acquired. He was subsumed under the name Harkonnen. Piter de Vries would soon find himself often in the little thing’s company. It was yet another consequence of his own acquisition.

The babe had come wailing into the Keep just over three years after Piter’s first steps through its fortified doors, and it stood to reason that he would be trained by the Mentat. It was quite unanimously agreed by both Mentat and master that the child’s brother – although older than the Mentat himself by a handful of years – was by no means a suitable heir, and thus one had to be brought up from scratch.

Piter was the means to that end. As many Mentats did, he accepted the mantle of mentor.

 

Piter considers himself now to be the means to many ends. In the last standard year alone he has been such to thirty-six, seventeen of which were by his own hand. The others, carried out roughly to the letter by his assassins, were of less import, but it was nonetheless he who engineered the swath of demise.

Piter prefers to kill by his own hand; his assassins are a suitable troupe, but they are not privy to the figures and plots and maneuvers that move through the brain of a Mentat. They do not move with his grace; they do not employ his finesse. They are not Piter de Vries.

If one wants a thing done, as the old adage goes, one must do it himself.

So Piter acquiesces to his Baron’s demands. There is no other man who could rear the child satisfactorily, and there have been no women about for years; the boy’s mother had been eliminated from the proceedings long ago, and Rabban’s harem was certainly not fit for the task. Any women acquainted with Rabban, his pleasure-girls most of all, would have jumped at the chance to garrote his baby brother in the hopes of crippling him. The flaw in such a plan is that Rabban would not have cared.

Even the few nurses that attended the baby were scorned by his Uncle for their very femininity. It was a tiresome affair to placate him, but they were, to a certain degree, invaluable; Piter agreed to tutor the child, not to bathe and dress him – and it was tacitly agreed between all that the Baron himself would not be trusted with such matters. It would not do to corrupt the child meant to be heir.

The wetnurses of Feyd’s infancy escaped the Keep with their lives and dignity intact, off to see to whatever else it was that midwives and nurses saw to in Giedi Prime. Stillbirths, assuredly, and dying slave children. As they cycled out, new servants cycled in, rigorously monitored to be sure they posed the child no threat. The Captain of the Guard took on new duties as the boy aged; steadfastly, Kudu kept the scamp out of trouble, raising his own regard with the Baron all the while.

And Piter went on tutoring the boy, instilling arithmetic and political machination into his little mind from a young age. When the Baron demanded that Feyd begin his combat training, Piter rose to the occasion before a lesser man could.

He teaches Feyd cautiously and well. It is enough to create a formidable young lord, yet not enough to create one who could turn a blade on his own Mentat and succeed. The demand to train Feyd was made, and it is being met.

Piter is a master of many demands, many of which he would prefer to refuse. He has little choice in the matter – commanded to speak, he speaks, and commanded to beg, he begs. Commanded to kill, he will do so with relish.

The demand he would most like to refuse is the oft-repeated request to dine with his master. By now, the Baron merely expects company as he eats rather than a true dinner guest – he has learned, at last, that Piter eats fastidiously and at strange times – but Piter nonetheless finds fault in the practice.

Many indignant Landsraad members take issue with the Baron’s sheer mass, the manifestation of his relentless hedonism. There has been liberal complaint about his habit of eating whatever and whenever he pleases, often with his bare hands. These concerned imperial citizens do not seem to understand that Baron relishes this, and that their disgust encourages him all the more.

Piter is not easily moved to disgust by his master. The Baron is exhausting, certainly, and loathsome in many ways, but even if Piter were possessed of delicate sensibilities, he would be unwilling to satisfy the Baron by demonstrating them.

Instead, he takes pleasure in denying his lord the ability to shock him, and by going a step further: he has perfected a unique ability of his own to disgust the _Baron_. An idle comment about the way boiling tallow destroys a human retina, and the blowhard scoffs and sours and dismisses Piter from his presence, harrumphing about “needless, undignified brutality” even as he chooses a child to have his way with.

Indeed, Piter is not disgusted by his master’s appetite for food. It is commonplace, but it does irritate him when the old monster becomes more preoccupied with a serving boy or a piece of meat that the pertinent information his Mentat is attempting to explain.

One of few advantages to a mealtime conference, however, is that the Baron is more pliable – and sometimes more agreeable – when he is well-sated. Piter has tested and proven as much time and again.

Harkonnen’s chair, large enough to be a throne, rests in the classic patriarchal setting at the head of the dining table. The table is long and ornate, fashioned by the native artisans of Giedi Prime’s own pilingitam wood, hard and uniquely prized for its way with pigment. In keeping with Harkonnen tradition, the table is accented with cobalt, and ornamented in precious stones and metals.

Feyd and Rabban are not present. Rabban is away once more, shuffling about in Carthag, and Feyd is permitted to do as he pleases this evening – accompanied, of course, by the ever-watchful, severe Captain Kudu.

Piter takes up the place he has long since usurped, within reach of the Baron’s right hand. He folds himself into the chair, crossing his legs at the ankles. “If my lord is preoccupied,” Piter begins, idly brushing a bit of his master’s errant saliva from his sleeve, “perhaps it would be wiser for us to convene at another time.”

“Nonsense,” the Baron booms. He does not fail to divine the subtle insult; he never does. “Get on with it, Piter.”

Piter smiles vacantly, and keeps himself alert by gauging the likelihood of whether or not he might be shouted down at any moment. It is never terribly likely. The Baron is a naturally loud man, but knows the rules of the game they play as well as Piter does. A Mentat never forgets; Piter never forgives.

“Indeed,” Piter says, and there is the hint of an unreleased sigh in his voice. “Feyd-Rautha’s training has been coming along.”

“How so?” the Baron demands through a mouthful of meat. “Do not be so vague, Piter.”

“It is precisely as I said: coming along.” It needs no modifiers; it is not coming along splendidly or disappointingly or even well. It has simply been _coming along_. “Perhaps two more rigorous weeks, and you will have the information you seek.”

The Baron swallows, growls, “Surely there is something you can speak of now.”

“Ah, something, yes. Feyd-Rautha is enthusiastic with the blade; this is a quite viable. But he has a certain tendency, my lord–”

Abruptly, the Baron cuts him off. He jerks his heavy head in Piter’s direction, scowling. “You seem tense, Piter.”

Sullenly, Piter begins to unfurl, legs stretching out before him as if in preparation to rise to his feet and glide from the room. He would like nothing more, but if he stood even to stretch his legs, he knows how the Baron would hold it against him. “As I say, Feyd possesses a certain habit I would like to break.”

“Is that so?”

“He is a bit of a dancer, my lord.” Piter extends one leg, sweeping his foot to the side as he raises his brows and grimaces thinly. “To move with grace is an art that is not simple to intuit. He must be taught the proper way to move before he can assert his own maneuvers.”

The Baron grunts, nodding begrudgingly, although he seems amused – either with Piter’s pantomiming, or with Feyd’s arrogance. Perhaps both. “He will learn from the best.”

Piter is not moved by the compliment, but he appreciates what it implies: that he is still useful to the Baron. “Indeed, my lord,” he agrees.

“Well? My barony concerns more than Feyd. What of the spice? Raids? Guards?” Bits of food fly from the Baron’s mouth. It is a most commonplace sight; Piter almost feels the urge to yawn.

“At its usual –” a clever double meaning, for Piter himself has just taken his usual dose, “– not a threat, and functioning as they should. The Captain’s men have been well-leashed as of late.”

“Hmph.” It is a noise muffled, once again, by food – but a softer one, a placated one. “Yes, Kudu is a useful one. I chose him well, eh, Piter?”

“Yes, my lord.” This is a tiresome line of conversation. Piter knows this game of the Baron’s, as well. He speaks of other men to Piter, and of Piter to other men, amusing himself by channeling his commentary, often unfavorable, through different venues.

“A brute indeed, yet he knows restraint. Very native – he knows his place. He knows what he was made for.”

“Yes, my lord.” Piter steers the conversation back to business in the space of a blink. “Giedi Prime has grown efficient. Our fiefs are profitable.”

So too has Giedi Prime grown rancid, industrial, sickly. The people are gray with soot and choked with dirt. Their lives do not matter to the men who machinate in the Keep; they are often irrelevant, when they are not bothering Piter to quell their revolts. Yet even that process has become streamlined – the lowliest Lieutenant or Corporal can go alone into a slavepit with a gun and eliminate rabblerousers quickly – or Rabban might go instead, paying a visit with his whip.

The Baron lapses into the relative silence that accompanies the final third of a meal. He does not speak, but the room is full of the sounds of his consumption: the wet, greedy resonance of his avarice.

“There is little to discuss, at least today,” Piter continues, wishing to end the conversation so that he might be dismissed. He feels as though this has become a waste of his time. “I do concur that it is an unusual change of pace.”

The Baron is silent and still for a moment; neither his fork moves, nor his jaw -- until he says, with slow, deliberate enunciation, “My dear Mentat is not keeping things from me, hm?”

“No.” Piter has learned not to protest too much or too earnestly; it only fosters suspicion. He taps a languid finger to his temple, indicating his mind. “I am not foolish, Baron, and I’ll take it unkindly to know you would question me so.”

“You’ve never been a kind man, Piter.”

The smile on the Mentat’s face is wicked. “Is that not why my dear Baron values Piter so much?”

A chuckle rumbles out of the Baron as he sets his knife and fork down. “True, true. But I must keep you on your toes, mustn’t I? You are something of a dancer as well.”

Piter’s smile thins. The implication does not sit well with him. He is no vacuous ballerina. He is no idle distraction.

A cunning, venomous creature such as Piter is difficult to come by, and even more difficult to secure the loyalty of. In nearly twenty years, Vladimir Harkonnen has not managed the latter, nor will he ever. True, he has bound Piter to him with millions upon millions of solaris worth of spice – but for all the pleasure of spice, energizing him more than sapho ever could, Piter knows that it has imprisoned him in the Baron’s relentless grasp.

So too does he knows that when the time is ripe, he will pluck it from the branch of the minutehand and wring every drop of nectar from its very heart.

He knows that it will be clear when to strike, and that time is not now. It is nearing, he thinks, but slowly. The hour hand moves at a crawl, but that is well enough. If it ever comes, he will be ready.

Until then, he still has much to do. There is yet a child to raise, a Duke to kill, and enough spice with which to buy and sell ten houses minor ten times over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys so much for enjoying this fic! it's been encouraging to see that people have appreciated it even in the years i haven't updated. ♥
> 
> there will be three more chapters after this one, and the fic itself runs from around 10186/7 to 10191 AG.


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